For some reason I was under the impression that 2024 was a quiet year. Writing this post I realise that's complete poppycock. Utter hogwash.

Let's see what 2025 brings but 2024 was alright.

  • Jan - Work trip to Phoenix
  • Cheeky solo day trip to the Grand Canyon via Sedona (stunning)
  • Kinda fell in love with Sonoran Desert fauna (Saguros!)
  • Guest room repainted
  • Began the "year of organising" with Gridfinity invading seemingly every drawer in the house.
  • Acquired original boxed copies of Sim City 4 and Rollercoaster Tycoon!
  • Started journaling
  • Began moving into spare bedroom for new a work from home studio
  • Found a wonderful new spot at Falls Lake to walk the dog off-lead safely
  • Smoked some Picanha
  • Joined Orange Theory Fitness
  • Feb - Learned via a podcast listener that AT&T Fiber was coming to my road!
  • Ice Cream and Pizza with the girls at Cugino Forna / Two Roosters in Durham
  • New Dell 40" Ultrawide - end game monitor is approaching (Dell U4025QW)
  • New acoustic panels for home studio (big upgrade over duvets!)
  • New server time with an EPYC server chip
Video: This is EPYC!
  • New SVS sub to pair with the LS50s in the home studio - love this thing
  • Server rack upgrades and a refresh to fit 3 servers - the temporary server rack that is now over 6 years old and made from 2x4s
  • R36s handheld gaming emulator
  • March - Travel silly season begins - LA - Pasadena for SCaLE 21x
  • Post conf roadtrip with the Mothership
    • Dipped her toe into the Pacific Ocean, saw Whales and a SpaceX launch!
    • Paramount Studio Tour
    • Joshua Tree NP
    • Death Valley NP - there was a lake in Badwater Basin!
    • Vegas - Home
Joshua Tree NP with my Mum
  • I am a saddo - new label maker (it is amazing!)
  • Unifi PDU added to the server rack
  • Trip with Mum (who hadn't gone home yet) to Virginia Beach and she dipped her toe in the Atlantic only a week after the Pacific!
  • April - New Perfect Media Server build with 13th gen Intel chip - video
  • Bought (before promptly returning) an Apple Vision Pro
  • Yaya visits Raleigh
  • DevOps Days Raleigh
  • Travel time again - Texas Linux Fest in Austin
  • Terry. Freakin'. Blacks.
  • Cat joins me in Austin for a big adventure
  • Overnight train from Austin to Tucson
    • Video diary
    • Tucson - desert aircraft museum, missile silo tour
    • I love Saguro's!!!
    • Frank Lloyd Wright - Taliesin West tour
  • New windows throughout the entire house - amaze
  • Travel time again - LinuxFest North West in Bellingham, WA
  • Back to Austin immediately after for DevOps Days Austin
  • Terry Blacks again. Yup, still amazing.
  • May - Started some projects around the house
  • Finished DIY AV rack, pulled the bonus room apart to move desk area
  • Ella's first proper ballet recital - I could melt
  • Quick shotgun trip up to NYC to hang out with Shayne and friends
  • They marked the roads in the neighbourhood for fiber!!
  • Met up with Morgan when he brought my old team together for a work thing at the RH Tower.
  • Year of organising continues with selling a ton of stuff and a total redo of the craft room storage situation for Ella + Cat
  • Repainted the neighbourhood book box after it was vandalised
  • June - The fiber was pulled!!! (But remained dark)
  • South East Linux Fest in Charlotte - great time with the unRAID crew there
  • Packed and ready for our summer holiday in England
    • Ella slept on the flight the 4hrs of darkness you get on an overnight and was just perfect the whole travel window
    • Met unRAID crew (again) bizarrely in London!
    • Self-Hosted listener meetup in Norwich
    • Great Yarmouth with the girls
    • Bure Valley Railway + Lunch by the river in Coltishall
    • Banham Zoo
    • Euros! (England made it to the final and lost)
    • Decamp to Basingstoke for time with Caitlin and Dave (and Nanna)
    • Watercress Line
    • Drivetribe Live at Haynes Motor Museum (a real highlight for me)
    • Trip to London and the Natural History / Science museums
    • Road on the worlds hottest Routemaster (how do they not have climate control?!)
    • Nandos.
    • Peppa Pig World!
    • Ella tries out "big girl beds" at IKEA and we promise her one for her USA bedroom as she graduated to them on this trip
    • Hogwarts Studio Tour
    • En-route to Heathrow we stopped off at Brooklands Museum and did their Concorde Experience - fantastic! (and Ella loved the Bus museum which is attached)
    • Flew home. Ella was again a champ! Couldn't have asked for more from her.
    • Great trip. Nice to be home. Thanks for a lovely 3 weeks England!
  • July - Installed ESP32 to control Garage AC that a listener gave me in Norwich
  • Took Ella to a "belt Sushi" place and she loved it!
  • Switching back into "being at home" mode took some time after all the travel in the first 4 months of the year - a bit too much perhaps. Take note.
  • Finished up the neighbourhood "Little Library" repairs
  • Began to implement a near complete garage workshop revamp. Fixing all those little things "I'll get to later" - the highlight was my bodged "crane" to lift the Sawstop table saw and raise it 4 inches with a custom made box to raise it to the height of my last saw.
  • French cleat wall
  • Drill holders
  • August - Narrowly avoided a tree falling onto our neighbours detached garage - led to removing half a dozen trees that were too close to buildings or rotten
  • Gridfinity continues apace now in the garage drawers and custom rack for desk tech
  • Custom folding outfeed table for Sawstop
  • Prep for 45Homelab server to go to Ontario with JB - custom PiKVM case
  • August - Ella starts in Children's House at MSR
  • Reorg continues with revamp of 3d printing area in the garage
  • Fly to Toronto to rack and stack the new JB server - video
  • September - Take Ella to IKEA in Charlotte to buy her that "big girl bed" we promised. She's really growing up fast now she's in Children's House.
  • Bought some Milwaukee Packout and my absolute new fav power tool the Surge 12v Impact driver from Milwaukee.
  • Ella starts "Soccer Shots"
  • Fiber gets lit up!!!!!!
    • 1000 down / 30 up upgraded to 5000/5000!
  • Attacked a massive tree root in our back yard - nearly killed me but I got it
  • Work trip to New Orleans
  • Hurricane Helene - flew home via Philly last minute to avoid
    • Asheville and the surrounding areas were hit so hard. Devastating.
  • Switched out OPNsense for a UDM Pro Max
  • Bought some new plants for the house
  • Ella starts showing interest in Piano - Cat gives her a few lessons. Cuteness overload.
  • Aerated and seeded the lawn by myself - will not do that again what an awful job.
  • October - Ella starts swimming lessons
  • Smoked a brisket. It was good. We're still eating it.

  • Pumpkin Patch at Page Farms
  • Yaya visits again
  • Factorio Space Age
  • All Things Open conference in Raleigh
  • Trick or treating with a rainbow Unicorn of a child
  • November - Still playing Factorio like mad
  • Decide on new desk area placement in Bonus Room (only took 5 months)
  • Buy a custom mech keyboard from Keeb.io - split ergo Iris CE. Not for me! Oops.
  • Holiday decorations appear at Home Depot and we loose Ella for ages to the "try me" buttons
  • New Dishwasher (yup, I get excited about such things these days) - Bosch 800. Nice.
  • New gaming rig build (still playing the crap out of Factorio)
    • Ryzen 9800x3d and Asus X870-E motherboard (10 gig NIC issues)
  • Ella starts stealing our phones and taking pictures of everything. Cute!
  • New M4 Max Macbook Pro to replace the aging M1 Max with the best screen coating I've ever used - the "nano texture"
  • December - Decide to get the Attic converted into another bedroom but primarily this will be used as a home studio for video work and as a home office.
  • Still playing a ton of Factorio
  • Dec 7th - Beat the game. (I started playing on October 21st and finished today. Approx 238 hours - just obscene but an absolutely MEGA update to my favourite game of all-time).
  • Built out a new toolbag
  • As the year winds down focus on spending a ton of quality family time over the holidays
  • Start clearing out the attic ready for the build in Jan
  • Attempt scratch pizzas using "poolish" pre-fermented starter dough. Amaze. Soft, and cruuuuunchy as the guy on YouTube says.
  • Made a DIY wrist rest for my Bridge75 HE mech keeb
  • A wholesome family Christmas, just us.
  • Organisation drive continues with a trip to the Container Store for a load of truly excellent plastic boxes to put our flours and stuff in.
  • Absolutely nailed Yorkshire Puddings for New Years eve dinner.

And that was 2024 folks.

A TON of travel. A ton of projects. And yet somehow I feel like very little happened. As I'm realising, that's just not true. Embrace the little things more in 2025 please Alex.